Barretts Net

Fashion has always been a risque business, constantly crossing the line of respectability to the point of lunacy. There are some lines that should not be crossed, where post modern expressionism is clearly a rather transparent ruse excuse for just doing whatever the hell you want because you think it will sell more magazines if you "push the boat out."

But doing a shoot in India, on the streets, with toothless old ladies holding babies and wearing designer clothes that cost more than they will earn in their lifetime, is a grotesque display of how ugly the fashion industry is. Who the hell do these people at Vogue think they are, exploiting these poor people to sell their magazines, the cost of the magazine being more than what they earn in a week.

It's not even as if these people were paid thousands of dollars, brought into a glossy studio and pampered, dusted with make up and sat under led strip lights, photographed in front of a wind machine while some perverted photographer shouts "wonderful darling, give me more sex, yes darling, wonderful." They were chosen because they live in slums, because they have no money, because they have no teeth or food, they are impoverished. And vogue gives them a designer handbag to hold, takes their picture and leaves them there on the street.

I hope those people were paid handsomely for their appearances in that magazine, if only to compensate for the indignity in which they were exposing themselves to, by being involved in an article such as this, an indignity that those people themselves were not likely to be privy to.